Overview
Monkey sees numbers go up, monkey happy. That’s Balatro in a nutshell. It has an incredibly addictive gameplay loop that manages to activate the same neurons that predatory gambling games and mobile trash love to prey on. The thing is, there’s nothing remotely predatory about Balatro. It’s just a rogue-lite card game with absolutely no stakes. Well, except for the sleep you might lose by playing it well past bedtime.
You can find a video version of this review on YouTube!
The concept couldn’t be more simple. You draw from a standard deck of playing cards, you play Poker hands, and you score points for the hands you play. However, there is a plethora of mechanisms that bank off of that simple concept and makes Balatro truly shine.
That said, despite the usage of poker hands, and terminology such as blinds and antes. Balatro largely has nothing in common with actual poker. I felt that was worth pointing out because I ignored Balatro for a long time precisely because I have no interest in poker.
Balatro uses Poker as a foundation but uses a wide array of mechanics that allows you to transform the very fabric of the card game itself, all in pursuit of higher scores and multipliers. It’s very much a game of fluid combo building, with a very open-ended approach to that goal.
| Gideon’s Bias | Balatro Information |
|---|---|
| Review Copy Used: Yes | Publisher: PlayStack |
| Hours Played: 23+ | Type: Full Game |
| Reviewed On: PC | Platforms: PC, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Platforms, Nintendo Switch, Mobile. |
| Fan of Genre: Yes | Genre: Rogue-lite Card Game |
| Mode Played: Variety | Price: $14.99 |
Bending the Rules
At the onset of a run, you are just playing straight-up Poker Hands. Every blind has you take on a set score of “chips” you need to earn to progress. You draw your cards and you have a set number of discards for each blind. The hands you play have a starting chip value and score multiplier, with stronger hands scoring higher. For example, a full house is worth more than two pair.
You very quickly gain the ability to modify those rules. You earn money that you can spend on Jokers, Tarot Cards, Planet Cards, Spectral Cards, and other boons or abilities. This is where you begin to forge your strategy. For example, planet cards increase the value of a given hand. One might make a flush more valuable, while another might make straights more valuable.
Jokers, on the other hand, modify the rules. Simpler ones might simply grant you a multiplier for playing a certain hand, while others have larger impacts, such as making hearts and diamonds count as the same suit, making flushes much easier to obtain.
Tarot cards on the other hand can modify the deck itself, transforming cards into other cards, or granting them special abilities when played, discarded, or held in your hand. Once you really get cooking, you can get multipliers that multiply each other and spiral upwards into insane combos.
The thing is, there is a degree of strategy in both, how you build out your deck and combos, and how you actually play it. While the gameplay itself has little to do with actual poker, the risk assessment is a very real part of the game. Knowing when to discard a viable hand, for a potentially stronger hand that fully utilizes the combo system you’ve built can make or break a run.
At the same time, carefully curating your list of jokers and deck alterations is incredibly important. If you buy a Joker that allows you to form flushes and straights with one less card, you have to make sure you can take advantage of it to score big.
There are 8 antes in a run, and each one has a small blind, a large blind, and a boss blind. The score required for each increases exponentially so you have to keep finding ways to grow and deploy your ideal combos from round to round.
The card play and numerous ways you can modify it are incredibly compelling, addictive, and fun, the game moves at a quick pace, yet still rewards careful thinking before, during, and after a blind as the game gives you decision points at every section along the way.
Ante Up
One such decision point is the blinds themselves. You can skip any small or large blind, but you have to play against the boss blinds. However, you earn a reward tag for any blind you skip. These tags can be free cards the next time you enter a shop, guaranteed rare cards, money boosts, or even immediate card packs to open. The catch is, that you only earn money and visit the store after PLAYING a blind, not skipping it.
You have to constantly weigh the pros and cons of playing a blind versus skipping one, and these factors aren’t only reflected in the rewards you personally want, but in the upcoming boss blind and how your deck is played.
For example, I once played a deck with a joker where anytime I played a hand while having less than four dollars, I was given a free Tarot card to modify my deck. This meant that it benefitted me to play as many blinds as possible, as every hand I played gave me a free new modification.
Other times those juicy tags are just too tempting to pass up, but you also have to factor in the boss blinds themselves. Each one has a special effect that you have to prepare for. For example, one boss might take away all your discards, or make you play every hand after your first one facedown. Getting caught off guard by a boss blind will end your run, but the information is all frontloaded.
You can see what tags you earn from skipping blinds and what the boss blinds effect will do ahead of time. If a boss blind is going to devalue all the cards you played during that ante, you know you should probably skip the other blinds to avoid playing any cards before the boss.
You have to think about the pros and cons of playing for money and getting access to the store, versus skipping a blind for the tag it offers, all while making sure you have prepped for the upcoming boss. It’s a simple but pretty brilliant way to give you additional agency in how a run plays out.
The quality of a lot of games, but especially card games and rogue-lites such as Balatro is based on the number of decision points it gives the player, and how meaningful those decision points are. Balatro is full of meaningful decision points, and every one of them has a significant effect on your run.
Meta Progression
There are a lot of things to unlock in Balatro, from new difficulties, decks, jokers, and more. One thing that separates Balatro from most games in its wheelhouse is that nothing you unlock makes Balatro easier, not directly anyway. You aren’t unlocking upgrades or power boosts. In fact, you could beat a run of Balatro on your first try, if you played well enough.
What you do unlock, are options. New jokers that you can combo with and decks that alter the way you play. Both can change your runs in significant ways and offer you new strategies that weren’t as viable before. At the same time, this doesn’t really hurt Balatros replay value, at all. That’s because there is an endless carrot on the stick after every run, the endless run.
Once you beat the 8th ante of a run, you have technically won. However, you can continue the run, and the game ramps up dramatically from there. If you think you have a broken combo, endless mode will allow you to test that theory out and see just how far you can get.
If you like more tangible achievements in games, Balatro also has that. You unlock new cards and decks by performing special challenges that you can trigger during a run. The game always tracks what decks and cards you have won a run with, and on what difficulty. Difficulties are unlocked per deck, so to truly master the game, you have to win a lot of runs, with a bunch of different decks and setups.
The whole system means Balatro never really becomes routine. As you improve at the game, there is always another set of challenges ahead of you, testing just how high you can make those numbers go.
Verdict
Balatro is a clever beast of a game in a small unassuming package. It takes the concept of poker, something I couldn’t be less interested in, and managed to hook me due to the sheer number of variables that you can use to twist, bend, and modify the rules of the game. Sure, there are no enemies to fight, and everything boils down to making numbers go up.
But the nearly limitless ways you can make those numbers go up, and how, makes the game incredibly satisfying, and addictive to play. The good kind of addiction, not the predatory kind.
Balatro takes a simple concept that pretty much anyone could grasp, and feeds you with meaningful decision points at every turn. Which blinds to play and which to skip? What Jokers to buy? How should you modify your deck? And how much of a risk should you take when actually playing your hands? It’s a fantastically fun degree of agency to have in an otherwise simple card game.
The great thing is, that risk assessment is based almost entirely on how you have molded your modifiers and the deck itself from the choices you’ve made, and that means no two games are ever entirely the same.
To top it all off, Balatro is a very inexpensive game, offering a great many hours of fun for a low price. Furthermore what it offers is something I think most people should be able to enjoy, whether you’re normally a fan of rogue-lites or not.
